International Journal of Education & the Arts Editors Christopher M. Schulte Eeva Anttila University of Arkansas University of the Arts Helsinki Kristine Sunday Tawnya Smith Christina Gray Old Dominion University Boston University Edith Cowan University http://www.ijea.org/ ISSN: 1529-8094 Volume 21 Number 32 November 5, 2020 Musical Self-portraits and Representations of Non/Conformity: In the Music Classroom with Preservice Generalist Teachers Terry G. Sefton University of Windsor, Canada Danielle Sirek University of Windsor, Canada Citation: Sefton, T. G., Sirek, D. (2020). Musical self-portraits and representations of non/conformity: In the music classroom with preservice generalist teachers. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 21(32). http://doi.org/10.26209/ijea21n32 Abstract Self-portraits are a genre of art, but also constitute artefacts of identity. This research explores student-created musical self-portraits produced by more than 150 generalist teacher education students (preservice teachers) in Ontario, Canada over a period of three years. The self-portraits were completed and submitted as an assignment at the beginning of the term in a compulsory music education class. This paper examines the material practice, influences, and symbols that students used. Most of the self- portraits conformed to the idea of ‘the good teacher’, while only a few represented IJEA Vol. 21 No. 32 - http://www.ijea.org/v21n32/ 2 identities that lay outside social norms. The findings contribute to an understanding of how students may groom their self-image and construct a public identity to fit the institutional and cultural ethos of preservice teacher education programs. Figure 1. Musical self-portrait created by a preservice generalist teacher for a music education class assignment Prologue The images appear to be arranged randomly. They include an eclectic mix from Mozart to Bob Dylan to Beyoncé. There is a bumper-sticker style message, “I [heart] zoning out,” and three images that don’t immediately read as musical references: an image of a runner’s feet, a graphic of a weightlifter, and a notebook and pen. In the top right quadrant are images of European composers Mozart and Bach, piano keys, and a symphony orchestra. There is also an album cover graphic with a “Parental Advisory” at the bottom. This album is 40 oz. to Freedom by the band Sublime. The title of the album has been blacked out, inked over, but with just enough transparency to decode. To the left of the Sublime album cover is an image of the rapper Eminem. One could read the inclusions of classical composers, pianos, and orchestras as an affinity for Western classical music; Bob Dylan might allude to an appreciation of music of the civil rights movement, or as a gesture to family or parental influences. These images are ‘safe’ and Sefton & Sirek: Musical Self-portraits 3 ‘school friendly’. Sublime, on the other hand, was a 1990’s California band that created three albums before its lead singer/songwriter died of a drug overdose. The album 40 oz. to Freedom – a reference to consuming a 40 oz. bottle of alcohol – includes the eponymous title song along with “Date Rape,” “Stoned,” and a cover of The Toyes’ “Smoke Two Joints.” Given the iconic graphics of the album cover art, covering up the title seems a bit coy. Introduction We, the authors, are both instructors in a Faculty of Education at a comprehensive university in Ontario, Canada. The collage described above was created by a preservice generalist teacher for a music education class assignment. The assignment asked students to create a musical self-portrait that would represent their musical identity. The majority of our students are preparing to teach at the elementary level (kindergarten to grade 8) as generalist (non- specialist) teachers, and will be responsible for teaching all, or almost all, subject areas.1 Preservice teachers in the generalist stream come from an array of undergraduate backgrounds. Many have limited formal music education, and most feel insecure about being responsible for teaching music (Bresler, 1993; De Vries, 2014; Griffin and Montgomery, 2007; Holden and Button, 2006; Mills, 1989; Sefton & Bayley, 2011; Stunell, 2010). In 2016, we began investigating pedagogical approaches that we could take to help non-music students feel comfortable in a music education course. One of the activities we initiated, to encourage all students to see themselves as having a musical identity, was the musical self-portrait assignment. Collecting visual artefacts from our students to better understand their musical identities became phase one of this research project. In this paper, we explore the intersection of musical identity and professional teacher identity formation, as revealed through visual artefacts created by preservice teachers in our classes. Many of our students are in their twenties: not so distant from secondary school, where musical tastes, dress codes, and other forms of identity performance define groups and subgroups. Students who played an instrument in high school, took music classes, or joined a choir or band may still align their musical identity with musical traditions they learned in school. But some may have listened to and identified with (and, perhaps, still listen to and 1 Less than half of Ontario’s elementary schools have specialist teachers for arts curriculum and music specialists are rarely available or assigned to teach the younger grade levels (People for Education, 2018). IJEA Vol. 21 No. 32 - http://www.ijea.org/v21n32/ 4 identify with) music that represents anti-social behaviour, non-conformity, or simply escapism—music not generally viewed as ‘school friendly’.2 Background Many researchers have explored the professional identity formation of teachers (Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009; Britzman, 1991/2003; Sutherland, Howard, & Markauskaite, 2010); music teacher identity (Beynon, 1998; Dolloff, 1999, 2007; Thompson and Campbell, 2003; Woodford, 2002); and the experience of non-specialist (generalist) teachers in teaching music (Bremner, 2013; De Vries, 2014; Griffin and Montgomery, 2007; Holden and Button, 2006; Mills, 1989). Our research takes a new approach by exploring music teacher identity and generalist teacher professional identity through visual sociology in order to inform and transform our own pedagogy. Identity as an ongoing construction or process not only looks backwards, to past influences and experiences, but forwards, to future roles and “possible selves” (Markus and Nurius, 1986). As part of our analysis of student artefacts, we examined students’ visual representations of their musical tastes and performances of identity (symbolic representations of class, race, gender, sexuality, or culture) to identify the common tropes and the outliers. The outliers that we identified were representations of genres such as death metal, gangsta rap, or hardcore punk. These are genres which, due to their lyrical content or underlying philosophy, would not be considered school friendly: that is to say, appropriate in a school setting. This led us to question whether such tastes and identities are rare, or whether they go underground, as students groom their image and construct a public identity to fit the institutional and cultural ethos of ‘the good teacher’. For our purposes, ‘the good teacher’ is a socially shared idea, one that can be constructed from popular tropes and metaphors (Dolloff, 1999; Thompson and Campbell, 2003), and that conforms to a community of practice, as perceived by our students. Rather than a list of attributes, the idea of the good teacher may be better approached as an image (Britzman, 1991/2003; Connell, 2009; Dolloff, 1999; Grant, 2015). This allows for layers of association 2 We use the term ‘school friendly’ as adhering to policies and practices set out by the Ontario College of Teachers (Ontario College of Teachers, 2019). In Ontario, Professional Standards of Practice are overseen by the provincial department of education through its regulatory body the Ontario College of Teachers. Further policy is instituted at the local school board level, and community standards may be yet another layer of social approval or censure. Sefton & Sirek: Musical Self-portraits 5 and for elements of discord to inhabit the same frame, revealing a composite or hybrid ideal within the context of a particular time and place. The transition of student to teacher, from one identity (learner, responsible for oneself) to another (teacher, responsible for the learning and well-being of others), can be fraught with unease, and an accompanying loss or fragmentation of one’s sense of self (Bernard, 2005; Britzman, 1991/2003; Dolloff, 2007; Salli and Ossam, 2017). Teacher candidates enter their professional education as if travelling into the forest, uncertain of their own capacities, and fearful of the dangers lurking in the unknown. One way for teacher candidates to navigate the unfamiliar territory of a new professional identity is by conforming to what they think of as the good teacher: their future ideal “possible self” (Markus and Nurius, 1986, p. 954). Methodology and Analysis Both authors are music educators with years of teaching, performing, and identifying as musicians and music educators. Trying to plumb the experience of our students, whose life experiences and expectations were not the same as ours, would require strategies that could disrupt our sense of the music classroom as familiar (Mannay, 2010). We chose visual artefacts as a way to explore student perceptions through symbolic interaction. We received ethics approval from our institution for a multi-year, multi-phase project that would include artefact collection, observation, focus groups, and interviews. Data for phase one of the project included student-created artefacts produced by more than 150 preservice teachers over a period of three years. Our analysis is not a quantitative one, however. Rather, we have used discourse analysis and symbolic interpretivism (Fine & Tavory, 2019). In this paper we will only be discussing the musical self-portraits. We mined the musical self- portraits as visual data for signifiers of group and individual identity.